Who Knew? Widgets Really Work
I was skeptical in July when Eric said we needed to spread face widgets (aka Recent Readers as described on ReadWriteWeb) across the planet, web page by web page. I was wrong, he was right, and we're all fortunate that I don't second-guess him on this sort of thing. Since we exited beta 10 days ago, widget posting has rocketed from 825 sites to 1335 sites. Weekday widget views (i.e. how many times the widgets are loaded into a web page) are up about the same proportion to a half million per day.
The breadth of use is also expanding. Corporate blogs are now beginning to join the mix. The ZillowBlog posted the widget this week. I believe they are the largest company to do so thus far.
Thank you all.
Who Knew? Widgets Really Work
I was skeptical in July when Eric said we needed to spread face widgets (aka Recent Readers as described on ReadWriteWeb) across the planet, web page by web page. I was wrong, he was right, and we're all fortunate that I don't second-guess him on this sort of thing. Since we exited beta 10 days ago, widget posting has rocketed from 825 sites to 1335 sites. Weekday widget views (i.e. how many times the widgets are loaded into a web page) are up about the same proportion to a half million per day.
The breadth of use is also expanding. Corporate blogs are now beginning to join the mix. The ZillowBlog posted the widget this week. I believe they are the largest company to do so thus far.
Thank you all.
Growing Your MyBlogLog Community
It's simple if you have dedicated readers to begin with. Just post the sort of thing that Jay did:
Earlier this week, I pestered my readers (that would be YOU) to join my MyBlogLog community. A few hours later, Edgy Mama replied, “Okay, I’m here…now what?”
I wondered the same thing myself. It took me a day or two to realize
that it wasn’t about “doing” anything beyond what you normally do:
surf, read, and comment. MyBlogLog merely enhances this experience by putting a face on your community....
So, come on. Aren’t you just dying to sign up now? 19 people have already drank the Kool-Aid. Don’t be the last person left alive when the soldiers storm the compound!
Read the rest; he just keeps going.
LeWeb3, formerly known as LesBlogs
I'm goin' to Paris in 6 weeks! Loic posted the program for LeWeb3. I made the first panel, which is right after Mike's opening keynote:
Bridging the conversation: how are the tools evolving ?
David Fischer - MySpace.com - UK
Andrew Anker - Vox / Six Apart - USA *
Dave Sifry - Technorati - USA *
Oleg Tscheltzoff - CitizenBay USA *
Scott Rafer - MyBlogLog - USA *
I went to LesBlogs2 last year, and it was well worth the trip. Show up if you can; lots of great people already are. The evening before the conference starts (10 Dec 2006), I'll find a bar in the 2nd, 8th, or 9th arrondissements to have a MyBlogLog meetup. Location suggestions welcome.
I'll do the same in London the evening of 13 Dec 2006, probably near Piccaddily unless someone has a better idea.
TechCrunch Steps Up
Michael and Marshall sure are supportive this week [Thanks, guys!]. We're going to do our best to make sure it pays for them. Not only did we get Crunch'd Thursday evening, but now they've posted our Recent Readers widget on all their pages.
The widget leads to individual reader profiles and to the TechCrunch reader community, which is growing nicely. The community has doubled to 312 since Thursday evening. Fred says that it will become more populous than his blog's community of 491 in another 24 hours. I think it'll take 72 hours, but that's just me.
Please take a look, join up, and let us know what you think.
Beta no more!
There are big things afoot in our corner of the web and we want to make sure you know the latest. We’ve pulled off the “beta” tag and gone all 1.0 on you. In the next couple of paragraphs I’ll explain what that means now and what you can expect in the coming months.
The first thing you’ll notice when you go to www.mybloglog.com is that we’ve merged MyBlogLog “the stats service” with MyBlogLog Communities. We’ve always been about intimacy and now it’s all in one place for you. When we say “Discover who visits your favorite site” we mean just that. Whether you’re an author who wants to know what your readers are clicking on or a reader who wants to see who shares your passion for a specific web site, we’re hooking you up. Hopefully, we're giving some form to this invisible social medium called the Web and then standing aside so that you can make the most of it."
We’ve made changes big and small to commemorate the occasion. You’ll notice a new home page right off the bat. We no longer bounce you straight to your personal profile, and if you get confused look for the link in the top right of the page. Additionally, we’ve made signing up a much easier process. While it might not matter a ton to you, the (hopefully) millions of people who follow you in to MyBlogLog will benefit from all the wonderful feedback you provided. On your personal, unique, and confidential view of your own profile page, we’ve also added a few new buttons. The most common questions I receive are “how do I change such-and-such in my blog settings” and “where’s the widgets?” Now you can jump directly to the widgets and site settings pages from your profile.
And speaking of the widget, we’ve made some MAJOR modifications on the backend. The Reader Roll and Top 5 Links widget now come with built in stats tracking. Just throw either one (or both) on your page and you get stats tracking. Of course, you can always go stealth and use the tracking script by itself.
Lastly, we’ve changed the way “admirers” work. Admirers (people who have made you a contact and would like you to do the same) still exist, but now only you can see them. When you look at your profile you’ll find the list in the same spot as before, but after receiving a lot of feedback, we’ve decided to make the list for your eyes only.
Expect to see some great things in the next couple of months. Now that we’re happy with the framework and we’ve knocked out the bugs, it’s time to start building the next round of features that bring you even closer to other people on your favorite sites. Improved messaging. More widgets. Additional stats. Significantly more communities. Better yet, if you’ve got an idea on what would make MyBlogLog better, send me message or drop me an email -- eric [a]t mybloglog.com. So many of MyBlogLog’s improvements start with a member saying “wouldn’t it be great if…” (Thanks Ferret and LordMatt).
That’s it for now. It’s awesome to belong to such a great community of people and we’re doing everything we can to give you the features and experiences you deserve.
Cheers!
Eric
Beta no more!
There are big things afoot in our corner of the web and we want to make sure you know the latest. We’ve pulled off the “beta” tag and gone all 1.0 on you. In the next couple of paragraphs I’ll explain what that means now and what you can expect in the coming months.
The first thing you’ll notice when you go to www.mybloglog.com is that we’ve merged MyBlogLog “the stats service” with MyBlogLog Communities. We’ve always been about intimacy and now it’s all in one place for you. When we say “Discover who visits your favorite site” we mean just that. Whether you’re an author who wants to know what your readers are clicking on or a reader who wants to see who shares your passion for a specific web site, we’re hooking you up. Hopefully, we're giving some form to this invisible social medium called the Web and then standing aside so that you can make the most of it."
We’ve made changes big and small to commemorate the occasion. You’ll notice a new home page right off the bat. We no longer bounce you straight to your personal profile, and if you get confused look for the link in the top right of the page. Additionally, we’ve made signing up a much easier process. While it might not matter a ton to you, the (hopefully) millions of people who follow you in to MyBlogLog will benefit from all the wonderful feedback you provided. On your personal, unique, and confidential view of your own profile page, we’ve also added a few new buttons. The most common questions I receive are “how do I change such-and-such in my blog settings” and “where’s the widgets?” Now you can jump directly to the widgets and site settings pages from your profile.
And speaking of the widget, we’ve made some MAJOR modifications on the backend. The Reader Roll and Top 5 Links widget now come with built in stats tracking. Just throw either one (or both) on your page and you get stats tracking. Of course, you can always go stealth and use the tracking script by itself.
Lastly, we’ve changed the way “admirers” work. Admirers (people who have made you a contact and would like you to do the same) still exist, but now only you can see them. When you look at your profile you’ll find the list in the same spot as before, but after receiving a lot of feedback, we’ve decided to make the list for your eyes only.
Expect to see some great things in the next couple of months. Now that we’re happy with the framework and we’ve knocked out the bugs, it’s time to start building the next round of features that bring you even closer to other people on your favorite sites. Improved messaging. More widgets. Additional stats. Significantly more communities. Better yet, if you’ve got an idea on what would make MyBlogLog better, send me message or drop me an email -- eric [a]t mybloglog.com. So many of MyBlogLog’s improvements start with a member saying “wouldn’t it be great if…” (Thanks Ferret and LordMatt).
That’s it for now. It’s awesome to belong to such a great community of people and we’re doing everything we can to give you the features and experiences you deserve.
Cheers!
Eric
Where the @#$* is the Recent Readers javascript?
Because of the way we originally architected the service, you needed to have the tracking script installed for the Recent Readers widget to work. This caused us to unintentionally bury the reader roll code. Good news, though, because the Recent Readers widget now functions completely independently. Plus, we're redesigning the registration process so that you can jump straight to the Recent Readers code after signing up. But for the time being, this is a quick guide to getting the code.
- Make sure you're signed into MyBlogLog
- Go to your blog's community page on MyBlogLog (you can get to this by clicking on the screen shot of your blog on your profile page)
- On the right-hand side is a Recent Readers widget, with a button below it labeled "Click to Get the Code". Click that botton.
- On the resulting page, you can fiddle with the colors and other attributes of the Recent Readers widget, such as the widget's width. You can see the color changes in realtime; everything else requires clicking the preview button. If you want to make further changes, hit the back button and keep fiddling.
- When you like the way the widget looks, click the preview button and then grab the javascript in the box labeled "Recent Readers Widget Display & Code".
It's going to get much simpler very soon, we promise 
Congrats to Iain Dale, et al.
Sites about a particular topic appear on MyBlogLog in bursts. Since Iain Dale created a community for his Diary early in September, British liberals and conservatives have been following him onto the service in droves. Today 18 Doughty Street, "Britain’s first political Internet TV Channel," launched and Iain's a big part of it.
He and I have not corresponded, but Iain must like our service a bit as someone at 18doughtystreet created a community for the new site and installed one of our widgets at 10am US EDT this morning. In just the last five hours, 18 people have joined the new community.
We are beginning to have enough visitors in this interest group that we're driving a bit of traffic back to those blogs. Iain Lindley posted his referrer stats for September, and MyBlogLog did pretty darn well. He only signed up for MyBlogLog on September 18th, and we're #3 on his list for the month. In addition to Councillor Lindley, a least half-dozen other British councillors (plus these) and hundreds of concerned citizens and commentators are now on on MyBlogLog.
We owe everyone a good way to organize around the topics they care about. We're working out what to do. Suggestions are welcome.
Partially Blocked in China?
One of our Chinese members let us know that we were "blocked in China" on Saturday. We're not quite sure what this means in concrete terms and would appreciate all suggestions and tutoring. We are still seeing a range of page-tracking traffic and account registrations from dot-cn domains.
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